Bubble in the Bathtub

  Proctor stopped. Then he slid down against the side of the bathtub, holding his head in his hands and moaning in despair. “You’re right. What are we going to do?”

  “Hm,” Juliette said.

  “Hm,” Lisa said.

  “Hm,” Joan said.

  There was a little plop and then Nilly’s voice said, “Relax, people! I have a plan.”

  They stared at Nilly, who studied his index finger with fascination before rubbing it with satisfaction against his pants leg. “A plan that is as simple as it is ingenious.” Nilly unbuttoned his uniform jacket and stuck his hand inside. First he pulled out Marcel’s trumpet and set it down, then he stuck his hand in again. “It’s already starting to get light outside the window, and it’s about time those sleepyheads got a wakeup they won’t soon forget. This plan has already been tested on a certain Mr. Napoléon and simply involves pouring a certain powder into the open mouths of the … of the …” Nilly’s facial expression changed as his hand searched around frantically inside his uniform.

  “What is it?” Proctor asked. “Did you lose something?”

  “There’s been a tiny little change in plans, people,” Nilly said, smiling stiffly with all of his teeth. “Looks like the bag of fartonaut powder got left behind in Rouen in 1111. But don’t worry, Nilly has everything under control. We will simply switch to plan B.”

  “Which is …?” Lisa asked skeptically.

  “For you to trust me.”

  The other three looked at Nilly, but he didn’t say anything else, just spun around on his heels, smiling that weird, crooked smile.

  Finally Lisa asked, “Is that the whole plan?”

  “Yes,” Nilly said, grabbing the tube of Doctor Proctor’s Fast Acting Superglue from the shelf. “Well, that and that I was thinking about playing a little morning reveille. After that I’m going to impofrise.”

  Lisa slowly shook her head.

  “What does ‘impofrise’ mean, Nilly?” Joan asked.

  Nilly flashed her his biggest smile. “That, my dear Joan, means that I, Sergeant Nilly, will come up with new things as soon as the things I already came up with fail.”

  “We just call that the Nilly Method,” Lisa mumbled as Nilly basked in Joan’s look of admiration.

  “Run out the door when you hear the trumpet signal,” Nilly said, grabbing the trumpet and pushing on the door handle.

  “Wait—” Proctor began, but Nilly was already gone.

  “What is he doing?” the professor moaned to Lisa, who was holding the door ajar and watching Nilly.

  “He’s standing in front of one of the hippos, he’s squeezing the tube of glue…. He’s smearing glue on the shotgun and the guy’s lap. Now he’s doing the same thing to the other hippo….”

  “Go Nilly!” Joan whispered.

  “He … he’s walking behind Claude Cliché’s back,” Lisa continued. “And … and undoing his suspenders from the back of his pants … and … and Claude stopped snoring….”

  “Oh no!”

  “Oh yes. And now … Claude is turning over … and now …”

  “Now? What now?”

  “Now he’s snoring again.”

  A collective sigh of relief was heard in the bathroom.

  “Nilly is tying the ends of his suspenders to the radiator,” Lisa whispered. “There. And now he’s climbing up onto the windowsill…. He’s taking a deep breath. He’s … he’s …”

  The trumpet reveille sliced like a knife through the thunderous snoring, which stopped immediately. Nilly lowered his trumpet and saw three pairs of bulging eyes staring at him.

  “Ten hut!” Nilly screamed. “All eyes on me, all feet on deck! Pronto!”

  As if on command—which ironically it was—the three men in the room all stood up.

  “Get him!” yelled the guy in the suspenders with the super skinny mustache.

  “Aye, aye, Mr. Cliché!” growled one of the hippos as he tried to pull his shotgun off his pant legs.

  “Uh, my gun’s stuck!”

  “Well then just grab him! He’s just a tiny little kid!”

  As the hippos lumbered toward him, Nilly saw the bathroom door slide open and his four friends slip out.

  “Come and get me, oh you ponderous giants of Dark Continent rivers!” Nilly sang, leaping from the windowsill to the desk chair as the hippos snatched after him. One of them flung himself at the chair, but Nilly hopped up onto the desk.

  Furniture was toppled and the lamp smashed during the hippos’ waddling quest to nab the red-haired impertinent micro-pipsqueak. Nilly had just made sure that his friends had made it safely out the door to the hallway when both hippos came tromping toward him, causing the floor to rock and the light fixture to start swinging. Nilly got a running start, jumped and stretched his arms up toward the ceiling light. If he could just grab it, then he could just swing himself over to the open door and, voilà, he would be safe! He was in midair, laughing to himself. This wouldn’t be that hard, he’d seen it done on TV and in movies a zillion times, where the hero just swung through the air like a trapeze artist. The problem was only that Nilly’s arms … well, they were a smidge shorter than most heroes’ arms. And the ceiling light was unfortunately hung a little higher than the chandeliers they usually used for this sort of thing in movies.

  Nilly’s arms spun around, but all his hands came in contact with was air. Everything that goes up must unfortunately come down, and the floor was approaching at high speed.

  “Cannonball …,” Nilly managed to mumble before that little snub-nose of his hit the wood flooring with a crunching sound.

  “We’ve got him,” he heard Cliché’s voice hiss from the chair by the radiator.

  Nilly rolled over and looked up. The two hippos were standing over him.

  He heard the jangling of coins.

  “Fill his pockets,” Cliché’s voice hissed. “And toss him out the window.”

  Nilly saw the hippo feet approaching. He closed his eyes and felt a hand brush down his side. And then a jerk as the hand found his saber and yanked it out of its scabbard.

  “Get your paws off Nilly, you cud-chewers!”

  Nilly opened his eyes. Joan was standing over him with the saber ready to chop, eyes trained on the hippos.

  “You came back,” Nilly said.

  “I couldn’t leave you in the lurch, Nilly,” she said calmly. “I mean, I am Joan of Arc, the greatest female warrior in history.”

  “Joan of Arc? Ha!” They heard Cliché scoff loudly from his seat behind the hippos. “Any idiot knows that she was burned at the stake in 1431. You don’t even look like her! Joan of Arc wore lipstick and had a wooden leg and a perm.”

  “A perm?” Joan screamed, outraged.

  “All you have to do is look at the old paintings from when they burned her,” Cliché said. “Grab that liar, men!”

  The hippos came at her.

  More than anything, Nilly wanted to close his eyes, but he kept them open. And he wouldn’t regret it. Because what happened next was some of the most amazing stuff he’d ever seen.

  Joan swung the saber with both hands. The weapon swirled so quickly in her hands that he couldn’t see the blade anymore, just a watery blur of shimmering steel swishing around. It made small cutting sounds as it sliced through belt buckles, jacket buttons, shirtsleeves, and clumps of hair. Sideburns, bangs, and side parts vanished.

  When Joan was done, the two hippos were standing in front of her, stunned, with their pants around their ankles, bare arms sticking out of sliced-off jacket and shirt sleeves, and the ugliest bowl cuts Nilly had seen since the Dark Ages.

  “There’s your perm!” Joan screamed. “Come on, Nilly!”

  She pulled Nilly to his feet and dragged him behind her out the door.

  As they ran down the stairs, they could hear Cliché yelling. “Give me the shotgun! Well then, take off your pants and give me those too, you idiot!”

  Joan and Nilly ran down all the flights, past the pictures
of the Trottoir family, past the armchairs in the lobby, past the reception desk where Monsieur Trottoir just managed to ask, “Checking out?” before they were out the revolving door, onto the cobblestones in front of the building.

  “Over here!”

  They spotted Doctor Proctor, Lisa, and Juliette, who were waiting for them on the other side of the market square next to a couple of empty fruit stalls.

  “Watch out!” Lisa yelled.

  Just then they heard a breathless voice right behind them say, “Freeze, otherwise I’ll shoot you to smithereens!”

  Joan and Nilly stopped. And turned around.

  Cliché was standing just a few yards behind them with his shotgun up against his cheek, aimed at them. A pair of hippo pants was still hanging from the shotgun.

  Cliché was leaning over slightly, as if there were a strong headwind, and it was easy to see why. His suspenders—which ran from the waistband of his pants over his stomach and shoulders and back in through the revolving doors into the Hôtel Frainche-Fraille behind him—were stretched as tight as guitar strings. Those really were some good, solid suspender clips that Cliché had gotten rich off of!

  “Come a little closer, so I can be sure I’ll hit you, you little gnome!” Cliché screamed at Nilly as he curled his finger around the shotgun trigger.

  “I’d love to help you out there, Monsieur Cliché,” Nilly said. “But considering you’re the one doing the shooting and I’m the one who’s going to be doing the dying, I think it makes the most sense for you to take a few steps closer to me.”

  “You badly mannered rascal!” Cliché growled, forcing his way another step closer as his suspenders trembled and whimpered in protest, but Cliché was so worked up that he didn’t notice what seemed to be holding him back.

  “I am a very small target, so maybe just one more step, Mr. Barometer.” Nilly smiled tauntingly.

  “Prepare to be decimated!” Cliché said, raising his foot to take another step.

  But that was it. And, oh, what an it it was. A strange expression came over Monsieur Cliché’s face as he felt himself losing his balance, felt his body being pulled backward, and with such force that the speed of the pulling increased. Cliché flew backward, in through the revolving door and so fast that he was no longer touching the ground. He flew past the reception desk where Monsieur Trottoir only had a chance to inhale before asking, “Checking in?”, past the armchairs, up the stairs, past the Trottoir family pictures, and in the open door to the hotel room, where the back of his head struck the radiator so hard that the clang sounded as if someone had just rung the biggest bell in Notre Dame cathedral.

  And as the clang was still reverberating across the city, our friends saw two terrified hippolike guys dressed in only tattered rags and underwear run out of the Hôtel Frainche-Fraille and disappear around the nearest corner.

  “Whoa, what did you guys do to them?” Lisa asked. “Those were the worst bowl cuts I’ve ever seen.”

  “Not us,” Nilly said, and pointed at Joan. “Her.”

  “I just impofrised a little,” Joan said.

  “And now …,” Doctor Proctor said, picking up the shotgun that Cliché had dropped, “… shall we go pay Barometer Cliché a bedside visit?”

  CLICHÉ WAS LEANING slumped against the radiator and looked like he was still unconscious when they entered the room. But he wasn’t snoring, just breathing steadily while his eyelids fluttered occasionally.

  “I’m sure he’ll come to soon,” Doctor Proctor said. “As we now know, it’s almost impossible to change history. Cliché is and will stay married to Juliette, and he’ll never willingly grant her a divorce. Any suggestions on what we can do?”

  “Run away,” Lisa said. “You guys could live on Cannon Avenue.”

  Proctor shook his head. “Cliché and his hippos will find us no matter where we go.”

  Juliette buried her face in her hands. “Oh, I wish he would have amnesia when he wakes up, that he would forget about being barometer, forget about me, forget that we were ever married.”

  “Hm,” Nilly said. Then he stood up and went into the bathroom.

  “Well, he did hit his head awfully hard,” Proctor said. “But I’m afraid a total loss of memory is too much to hope for.”

  “Leave it to me,” Nilly said, coming out of the bathroom with the toothbrush glass in his hand. “And to Perry.”

  “Perry?” Joan asked, staring at the little spider inside the glass.

  “A seven-legged Peruvian sucking spider.” Nilly walked over to the unconscious man and set the open end of the glass against his ear. And, voilà, the little spider was gone.

  “What are you doing?” Juliette asked, appalled.

  “The question you should be asking is, ‘What is it doing?’ Because since Perry is a sucking spider, he’s inside this man’s head right now, sucking up all his memory. When the man wakes up, he’ll feel like he had a good night’s sleep. He’ll be in fine form and a great mood. However, the only thing he’ll be sure of is that he isn’t able to remember anything. Not a thing. Nothing. Nada.”

  Nilly looked around at the skeptical faces.

  “It’s true!” Nilly said indignantly. “It’s all described in detail in AYWDE.”

  “AYWDE?” Juliette asked.

  “An abbreviation for Animals You Wish Didn’t—”

  “Nilly!” Lisa groaned. “Those animals in that book are just things that you made up!”

  “They most certainly are not!” Nilly said, crossing his arms and looking profoundly insulted. “But if you guys would rather, you could just use the Cliché method. Fill his pockets with coins and chuck him in the river!”

  Doctor Proctor shook his head. “That’s what makes us different from people like him, Nilly. We don’t do things like that.”

  “All right,” Nilly said, disgruntled. “So skip the part about the coins and just toss him in the river. That would be a lot cheaper, too.”

  “Nilly!”

  Nilly stomped his foot angrily against the floor. “But you guys know it will be impossible to get him sent to jail. There isn’t a judge in Paris who would dare to convict him! And when he comes to, he’ll—”

  “Eureka!” Lisa shouted.

  The two grumpmeisters turned to stare at her. Because they knew that Lisa wasn’t the kind of person who shouted “eureka” everyday.

  “Jail,” Lisa said.

  “What do you mean?” Proctor asked.

  “We’ll do what Raspa did with Juliette! We use the bathtub to send him to a jail in a time that’s far, far away.”

  “Perfect!” Nilly said. “And when he comes to, he won’t remember how he got there and won’t be able to explain that he’s innocent!”

  Proctor, on the other hand, did not look as enthusiastic. “I’m not so sure taking the law into our own hands like that is the right thing to do. I mean, we’re not judges.”

  “Well, do you have a better idea?” Nilly asked.

  “No,” Proctor admitted.

  “We could send him somewhere where he could stay until we have a chance to think of something,” Lisa said. “Then we could go back and get him later.”

  Everyone thought this was a good idea, so they set to work. They undid Cliché’s suspenders, and with them all working together they managed to get him into the bathroom and up into the time-traveling bathtub.

  As they were doing this, there was a cautious knock on the door to the hotel room, and Juliette went to open it.

  “Where should we send him?” Lisa asked.

  “Leave it to me,” Nilly said, clutching the jar of time soap. “I know a really clever place.”

  Juliette stuck her head into the bathroom. “There’s someone here to see you, Victor. And you, Lisa.”

  “Hm,” Proctor said. “Who could it be?”

  “A French woman who knows you both,” Juliette said. “She says she’s an assistant judge.”

  “I don’t know any French women,” Lisa said. “And cer
tainly no judges, assistant or otherwise.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Juliette said with a wink.

  Lisa and Proctor walked out of the bathroom and, sure enough, there was an elegant adult woman. She was wearing the kind of business attire that makes you look thinner than you are, and the kinds of glasses that make you look like you don’t really need glasses. There was something vaguely familiar about her.

  Behind her there were two uniformed policemen. They each had a different kind of mustache. Enough said.

  “Bonjour, Lisa.” The woman in the suit smiled, held out her hand and said something else in French.

  “Uh …,” Lisa said, jumping a little as Juliette decisively slid her French nose clip back into place.

  “You don’t recognize me, do you?” the woman said. “Without the poncho.”

  “Uh, no,” Lisa said.

  “What if I take these off?” the woman asked, taking off her glasses.

  Then Lisa saw it.

  Sure enough, she wasn’t a little girl anymore, she was a grown woman, but it was … Yes, it was the girl she’d met by the bridge outside Innebrède!

  “Anna?” Lisa exclaimed.

  “Yup, it’s me,” the woman laughed. “I suppose I ought to be surprised to see you again too, but my whole life I’ve had this feeling that we would see each other again. Especially since I made a decision that day we met by that bridge.”

  “Oh?”

  “Do you remember what we talked about?”

  “Hm … Wait, yes! How terrible it was that no one was brave enough to stop men like Claude Cliché.”

  “Exactly. But you said I ought to try. So I decided I would. I worked hard in school, I studied the law in Paris, and I’ve worked long and hard until now to become a judge. For the last year I’ve been leading the investigation into Claude Cliché. We’ve had him under surveillance day and night to obtain evidence of his criminal activities. We decided a few days ago that we have enough to arrest him, so we decided to apprehend him when he came here today.”

  “That’s great!” Lisa said, clapping her hands. “Did you hear that, Doctor Proctor? Now we don’t need to send Cliché anywhere.” Lisa turned back to Anna again. “Because you guys promise to put him away for a good, long time, right?”